Why You Should Always Write Your Headline First

You’ll of course have a basic idea for the subject matter of your blog post, article, free report, or sales letter. Then, simply take that basic idea and craft a killer headline before you write a single word of the body content.

Why?

Your headline is a promise to readers. Its job is to clearly communicate the benefit you’ll deliver to the reader in exchange for their valuable time.

Promises tend to be made before being fulfilled. Writing your content first puts you in the position of having to reverse-engineer your promise. Turn it around the other way and you have the benefit of expressly fulfilling the compelling promise you made with the headline, which ultimately helps to keep your content crisp and well-structured.

Trying to fulfill a promise you haven’t made yet is tough, and often leads to a marginal headline. And a poorly-crafted headline allows good deeds to go unnoticed.

You know, like your content.

“But that still doesn’t tell me how to write a great headline,” you’re saying.

I said to write the article before the headline in one of my older posts (find it here). I have since changed my evil ways, and now I’m absolutely an advocate of the technique Brian prescribes above. Nothing is more important than that headline, and it should dictate the contents of the article (not the other way around).

Sounds good, but from an amateur writer .. this sometimes makes things worse. In my drafts, I have about 20 titles of great soon-to-be articles that I have never written. When I eventually get around to it, sometimes it helps me having the title to focus on the content. But, other times – after I finish writing lots of stuf – I realize that the title has nothing to do with my blog entry, and rename it.

Can’t agree with it when stated as such an absolute. The essence of your advice here is that articles need to stay on message to be coherent. Writing the headline first is a way of confining yourself so that you can achieve that, but it’s not the only way. I almost never write without a specific point to be made in mind, so I don’t the confines of a headline. But my headlines end up dull when I write them before the fact.

I’m much better at promising something that I know the reader will get than at making a promise as a way to make myself deliver it.

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